


so now for restless mind

by shatterthelight



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 22:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12442662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: She wouldn't have to go far. She could creep downstairs, break into the bar, swipe the poison. It wouldn't be the first time. And it's her own hotel to steal from now. It's her own life to ruin.She could drown out the monsters. Drown herself until she doesn't feel a thing.Luisa is alone.





	so now for restless mind

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I'm still working on A Certain Slant of Light, but after last night... let's just say I needed to write an elaborate _fuck you_ and call it coping.
> 
> My daughter is a survivor.

She wakes up in a cold sweat for the fourth night in a row, heart racing, limbs shaking, eyes burning and bleary and bright with fractured fire.

The clock at her bedside reads _2:07 A.M.,_  and she feels tired, and she feels ill, and she isn't going to be able to fall back asleep no matter how hard she tries.

Luisa is no stranger to restless nights, be they from anxiety, drinking, or a simple inability to shut off her mind. But the nightmares are the harshest mistress, and ever since she kicked her brother out, they have become relentless monsters, stampeding through her body, bent to tear her soul apart piece by piece by piece. Luisa has outrun the wolves at her heels for as long as she has lived, but when she shuts her eyes, there is no hiding from the claws and the teeth.

It doesn't matter if she remembers them or not. She wakes up bleeding either way.

She slides out of bed onto unstable feet, flicks on her lamp, and is swallowed, all at once, by the oppressive turquoise of a room that has never felt like home. She crumples to her knees, hands slamming onto the floor, and she narrows in her focus on _breathing breathing breathing_ as the walls crash down around her.

Luisa is alone.

She knows it. She's _known_ it, maybe all her life, but god, sometimes it hits her with such suffocating force that she wonders why the hell she even bothers fighting to hold onto people who are always going to leave her in the end.

_Totally crazy – just like your mother._

The second he spoke them, those words had trickled into her ears and seeped into her lungs, tore them open, hardened into a hollow ice that rattles around in her ribs with every breath she takes, and no amount of  _I love my brother, I love my brother_ can melt it. He has said plenty of cruel things to her, weaponized his words to cut her down, but he has never struck her so deep as this.  _Crazy, crazy, crazy_ , she's bit the lip of that word under many a thundered evening and twisting umbrella. Another wolf to outrun.  _Just like your mother-_

Her mother left her first.

Her mother - she'd  _thought_ her mother had left the world altogether, thought her mother had fallen prey to her own pain more times than she could ever bear. She'd thought her mother had killed herself. And it had taken her a lifetime to understand that it hadn't been about Luisa, she hadn't been _consciously_ abandoning Luisa, only to come to find out _thirty years later_ that she _had._ That she'd packed up her existence and abandoned her daughter to the dust. Maybe that was the first crack in this road Luisa's been hurtling down, this path to splitting open. Or maybe she'd cracked long before. Maybe she'd been born with creviced skin.

It doesn't make a difference.

Luisa breathes, breathes until she's a little less close to death, breathes until she feels human. Then she rocks back, digs her nails into the carpet, and thinks of how goddamn badly she wants to drink. 

That thought ruptures her insides and she laughs and sobs in the same gasp, cranes her neck back and prays to a god she does not believe in.  _Just like your mother_. She hadn't learned until she was an adult and already surrendering control to the bottle that Mia had been an addict herself, and the rest of the puzzle had clicked into place.  _Just like your mother_. And now here is Luisa, the self-fulfilling prophecy her family always thought she would become.

"It's not worth it," she says aloud, the words sliding off her tongue and tasting like bile and lies. "It's not worth it, it's not worth it, it's not worth it."

Isn't it?

Does she care what her brother thinks of her? Even now? Even after the knife he thrust into her heart, severing the cord of that little remaining hope that she might have ever meant something to him?

Does she care?

( _she does she does she does she does she does_ )

She wouldn't have to go far. She could creep downstairs, break into the bar, swipe the poison. It wouldn't be the first time. And it's her own hotel to steal from now. It's her own life to ruin.

She could drown out the monsters. Drown herself until she doesn't feel a thing.

The nightmares had been bearable when Rose was there to carry her through them. She remembers, vividly, one night when she’d clung to Rose while whispering _I'm terrible, I'm terrible, I'm terrible._

 _You are the most loving heart I've ever known. You see the good in everything,_ Rose had whispered in turn. _You see the good in everyone. Everyone except yourself._

Luisa doesn't simply  _see_  the good, she looks for it, strives to find it, because otherwise, the shadows will kill her. In this moment, though, there is nothing to find. Her endless well of forgiveness has run dry at last, and she is terrified of the dark, throbbing fury shrivelled and shrieking at the bottom of the abyss. She has felt anger before, but not with such an urge to scream at the universe until the stars beg for mercy.

There is nothing to find, but Luisa doesn't want to die. She  _doesn't_. So she reaches out, reaches to cling to something, anything, some shred of kindness or sliver of hope, and she grasps-

_You are not a burden._

She can see Rose's eyes in the blue blue blue of the walls, can hear her voice in the ringing of her ears.

Luisa is alone.

She'd been happy, genuinely _happy,_ unfamiliarly so. But her brother couldn't just let someone care for her unconditionally any more than he could do it himself, and he had ripped that happiness away from her.

"It's not worth it." _Escape_. She rises again. _Escape_. Her knees don't give out this time. _Escape._ "It's not worth it."

He looks at her as though she's built for the fire, and perhaps he's not wrong. But these legs of hers have never known how to do anything except run full-speed towards the light. All she has ever needed is warmth. All she has ever wanted is for someone to look at her as though she's worthy of being alive. She has been her family's dirty little secret from the moment she was born, and she's lost count of the bruises their silence left behind.

If wanting to be loved makes her the villain of her brother's story, then he was never worth the fight.

For decades, she has tried. She has _tried_ , and it was never enough for him.

"It's not worth it." She flips the switch again, cloaks the room in darkness. "It's not worth it." She falls backwards onto the mattress, tries not to imagine losing herself to numbness and wine, stares up at a ceiling she can't see. "It's not worth it."

She's alive. That alone has to mean there is more to her than he believes. She wants that to be enough for her. She wants to be enough for herself.

"He's not worth it."

_Do not break yourself for his sake._

"He's not worth it."

Luisa's never been unwilling to tear herself to shreds, but she has always done so with self-loathing, the desire to punish herself, the deep-rooted belief that she is the complication in everyone's narrative. She has always drowned herself with the thought that if she is fated for destruction no matter her efforts, she might as well be the one to wreck the ship. She has died by her own hands, time and time again.

But she will not die by his.

Luisa curls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around herself, holds in the hurricane and takes comfort in the pelting rain and the howling wind. This is her storm, one of which she doesn't want to be ashamed, and her brother doesn't get to take it.

So she dances in the downpour. She opens her arms to the flood. She turns her face to the sky.

She breathes.


End file.
